Jean Marie Stine - A Sci-Fi Terror Trilogy

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A Sci-Fi Terror Trilogy

Three Terrifying Short Novels That Became Great Science Fiction Horror

Films

A Futures Past Classic- Selected and Introduced by Jean Marie Stine

A Renaissance E Books publication

ISBN 1-58873-023-9

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission.

For information contact:

Renaissance E Books

P. O. Box 494

Clemmons, NC 27012-0494

USA

Email comments@renebooks.com

Publication Data

Herbert West-Reanimator home brew 21-22

Reprinted by arrangement with an agent for the author's estate.

record of renewal. Reprinted by arrangement with an agent for the author's estate.

DEDICATION

To the Authors Herein Represented

Who are usually ignored entirely

When enthusiasts discuss these films.

CONTENTS

Introduction

Herbert West – Reanimator by H.P. Lovecraft

Filmed as "Re-Animator" (1985)

The Fly by George Langlaan

Filmed as "The Fly" (1958, 1986)

Deadly City by Paul W. Fairman

Filmed as "Target Earth: (1954)

Filmographies

INTRODUCTION

It's probably no coincidence that so many science fiction moves have been

developed from short novels. A movie needs a plot that is more complex than a

short story but not quite as long and complicated as the typical novel.

This can make things hard for those who would like to read the stories that some of

these film are based on. By its nature, the short novel is too long to fit in the average

short story collection, since it would take up a quarter to three-quarters of the

available space. Likewise, it is too short to be published in book form on its own.

As a result, it is not always easy for readers to obtain the stories that inspired

box-office hits likeRe-animator ,The Fly , andTarget: Earth .

That's why Futures Past Classics is pleased to be able to make these three tales

available to contemporary readers in a new electronic edition. Each served as the

springboard for a classic science fiction horror film; each is a masterpiece in its own

right; each merits reading and rereading again.

Jean Marie Stine

August 4, 2001

Watch for the next Futures-Past/PageTurner E-Books release,and be sure to visit

the Futures-Past Classics Home Page for our free on-line magazine of classic

public domain science fiction and fantasy stories, articles, interviews, movie stills,

rare book and magazine covers, and news of our forthcoming e-books. URL:

http://www.hometown.aol.com/pulplady/FUTURES.html/

Herbert West – Reanimator

Filmed as: "Re-Animator"

By H. P. Lovecraft

H. P. LOVECRAFT'S "Herbert West – Reanimator" is the first fictional work for

which he received payment, albeit a modest one from a small circulation

publication. That was 1921, and Lovecraft had already been writing his own

patented brand of eldritch fable for three years – fortunately he was only a year

away from finding his predestined market, the stellar Weird Tales, which would

purchase the bulk of his fiction from then on. "Reanimator" appeared in the

quaintly titled Home Brew as a series of six linked, but independent, short stories.

Though his first professionally published work, it already bears all the

distinguishing characteristics of the later, mature work that would earn him

enduring fame. Lovecraft has been celebrated – and denigrated – as a writer of

"nameless horrors," of "noisome crypts," of "charnel researches," and people

driven by "unholy obsessions" – and if this is your cup of tea – "Herbert West,

Reanimator" has them all, and to spare.

"Reanimator" also makes clear the profound influence of Mary Wolstonecraft

Shelly and her immortal Frankenstein on Lovecraft's work. Just consider this

passage from her book: "My cheek had grown pale with study, and my person had

become emaciated with confinement. Sometimes, on the very brink of certainty, I

failed; yet still I clung to the hope which the next day or the next hour might

realise. One secret which I alone possessed was the hope to which I had dedicated

myself; and the moon gazed on my midnight labours, while, with unrelaxed and

breathless eagerness, I pursued nature to her hiding-places. Who shall conceive

the horrors of my secret toil, as I dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the

grave, or tortured the living animal, to animate the lifeless clay? My limbs now

tremble and my eyes swim with the remembrance; but then a resistless, and almost

frantic, impulse urged me forward; I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but

for this one pursuit. It was indeed but a passing trance that only made me feel

with renewed acuteness so soon as, the unnatural stimulus ceasing to operate, I

had returned to my old habits. I collected bones from charnel-houses; and

disturbed, with profane fingers, the tremendous secrets of the human frame. In a

solitary chamber, or rather cell, at the top of the house, and separated from all the

other apartments by a gallery and staircase, I kept my workshop of filthy creation:

my eye-balls were starting from their sockets in attending to the details of my

employment. The dissecting room and the slaughter-house furnished many of my

materials; and often did my human nature turn with loathing from my occupation,

whilst, still urged on by an eagerness which perpetually increased, I brought my

work near to a conclusion."

Compare that passage with this one from "Herbert West": "The essence of Herbert

West's existence was a quest amid black and forbidden realms of the unknown, in

which he hoped to uncover the secret of life and restore to perpetual animation the

graveyard's cold clay. Such a quest demands strange materials, among them fresh

human bodies. West was experimenting madly to find something which would

start man's vital motions anew after they had been stopped by the thing we call

death, but had encountered the most ghastly obstacles. The bodies had to be

exceedingly fresh, or the slight decomposition of brain tissue would render perfect

reanimation impossible. Indeed, the greatest problem was to get them fresh

enough – West had had horrible experiences during his secret college researches

with corpses of doubtful vintage. The results of partial or imperfect animation

were much more hideous than were the total failures, and we both held fearsome

recollections of such things."

If you find a bit of repetition here and there in the linked vignettes that make up

the tale, try to remember that "Reanimator" ran serially in installments in a

magazine; and that absent-minded readers need to be reminded of key plot details

they had probably forgotten in the ensuing month.

Of H. P. Lovecraft, the hermit of Providence – his arcane interests, his foibles that

amounted almost to mania, his uncertain sexuality, his Puritan roots, his family

curse, and all the rest of the morbid influences that helped mold him into the early

20thcentury genius of "cosmic terror" – too much has already been written to

warrant repeating here. For he, first of all, looked into the endless depths of time

and space opened by the dawn of the scientific age, and wondered if we could be

anything more in the face of that immensity than microbes or animals; and then

he wrote stories in which human beings were portrayed as nothing more to the

great beings of the universe than cattle and vermin. It's a shuddersome concept.

What if aliens arrived to whom we were no more than the Native American to the

European colonists – to be cast into slavery, driven off our land, decimated? No

wonder he typically chose to cloak his message in the symbolic garb of monstrous

all-powerful Gods so hideous they can not be described (whose alien origins are

only subtly unfolded). In "Herbert West – Reanimator," the horrors are less

cosmic, but the outcome is equally soul-searing.

FROM THE DARK

OF HERBERT WEST, who was my friend in college and in after life, I can speak

only with extreme terror. This terror is not due altogether to the sinister manner of his

recent disappearance, but was engendered by the whole nature of his life-work, and

first gained its acute form more than seventeen years ago, when we were in the third

year of our course at the Miskatonic University Medical School in Arkham. While he

was with me, the wonder and diabolism of his experiments fascinated me utterly, and

I was his closest companion. Now that he is gone and the spell is broken, the actual

fear is greater. Memories and possibilities are ever more hideous than realities.

The first horrible incident of our acquaintance was the greatest shock I ever

experienced, and it is only with reluctance that I repeat it. As I have said, it happened

when we were in the medical school, where West had already made himself

notorious through his wild theories on the nature of death and the possibility of

overcoming it artificially. His views, which were widely ridiculed by the faculty and

by his fellow-students, hinged on the essentially mechanistic nature of life; and

concerned means for operating the organic machinery of mankind by calculated

chemical action after the failure of natural processes. In his experiments with various

animating solutions he had killed and treated immense numbers of rabbits,

guinea-pigs, cats, dogs, and monkeys, till he had become the prime nuisance of the

college. Several times he had actually obtained signs of life in animals supposedly

dead; in many cases violent signs; but he soon saw that the perfection of his

process, if indeed possible, would necessarily involve a lifetime of research. It

likewise became clear that, since the same solution never worked alike on different

organic species, he would require human subjects for further and more specialized

progress. It was here that he first came into conflict with the college authorities, and

was debarred from future experiments by no less a dignitary than the dean of the

medical school himself – the learned and benevolent Dr. Allan Halsey, whose work

in behalf of the stricken is recalled by every old resident of Arkham.

I had always been exceptionally tolerant of West's pursuits, and we frequently

discussed his theories, whose ramifications and corollaries were almost infinite.

Holding with Haeckel that all life is a chemical and physical process, and that the

so-called "soul" is a myth, my friend believed that artificial reanimation of the dead

can depend only on the condition of the tissues; and that unless actual

decomposition has set in, a corpse fully equipped with organs may with suitable

measures be set going again in the peculiar fashion known as life. That the psychic

or intellectual life might be impaired by the slight deterioration of sensitive brain-cells

which even a short period of death would be apt to cause, West fully realised. It had

at first been his hope to find a reagent which would restore vitality before the actual

advent of death, and only repeated failures on animals had shown him that the natural

and artificial life-motions were incompatible. He then sought extreme freshness in his

specimens, injecting his solutions into the blood immediately after the extinction of

life. It was this circumstance which made the professors so carelessly sceptical, for

they felt that true death had not occurred in any case. They did not stop to view the

matter closely and reasoningly.

It was not long after the faculty had interdicted his work that West confided to me

his resolution to get fresh human bodies in some manner, and continue in secret the

experiments he could no longer perform openly. To hear him discussing ways and

means was rather ghastly, for at the college we had never procured anatomical

specimens ourselves. Whenever the morgue proved inadequate, two local Negroes

attended to this matter, and they were seldom questioned. West was then a small,

slender, spectacled youth with delicate features, yellow hair, pale blue eyes, and a

soft voice, and it was uncanny to hear him dwelling on the relative merits of

Christchurch Cemetery and the potter's field. We finally decided on the potter's

field, because practically every body in Christchurch was embalmed; a thing of

course ruinous to West's researches.

I was by this time his active and enthralled assistant, and helped him make all his

decisions, not only concerning the source of bodies but concerning a suitable place

for our loathsome work. It was I who thought of the deserted Chapman farmhouse

beyond Meadow Hill, where we fitted up on the ground floor an operating room and

a laboratory, each with dark curtains to conceal our midnight doings. The place was

far from any road, and in sight of no other house, yet precautions were none the less

necessary; since rumors of strange lights, started by chance nocturnal roamers,

would soon bring disaster on our enterprise. It was agreed to call the whole thing a

chemical laboratory if discovery should occur. Gradually we equipped our sinister

haunt of science with materials either purchased in Boston or quietly borrowed from

the college – materials carefully made unrecognizable save to expert eyes – and

provided spades and picks for the many burials we should have to make in the

cellar. At the college we used an incinerator, but the apparatus was too costly for our

unauthorized laboratory. Bodies were always a nuisance – even the small guinea-pig

bodies from the slight clandestine experiments in West's room at the

boarding-house.

We followed the local death-notices like ghouls, for our specimens demanded

particular qualities. What we wanted were corpses interred soon after death and

without artificial preservation, preferably free from malforming disease, and certainly

with all organs present. Accident victims were our best hope. Not for many weeks

did we hear of anything suitable, though we talked with morgue and hospital

authorities, ostensibly in the college's interest, as often as we could without exciting

suspicion. We found that the college had first choice in every case, so that it might

be necessary to remain in Arkham during the summer, when only the limited

summer-school classes were held. In the end, though, luck favored us; for one day

we heard of an almost ideal case in the potter's field, a brawny young workman

drowned only the morning before in Sumner's Pond, and buried at the town's

expense without delay or embalming. That afternoon we found the new grave, and

determined to begin work soon after midnight.

It was a repulsive task that we undertook in the black small hours, even though we

lacked at that time the special horror of graveyards which later experiences brought

to us. We carried spades and oil dark lanterns, for although electric torches were

then manufactured, they were not as satisfactory as the tungsten contrivances of

today. The process of unearthing was slow and sordid – it might have been

gruesomely poetical if we had been artists instead of scientists – and we were glad

when our spades struck wood. When the pine box was fully uncovered West

scrambled down and removed the lid, dragging out and propping up the contents. I

reached down and hauled the contents out of the grave, and then both toiled hard to

restore the spot to its former appearance. The affair made us rather nervous,

especially the stiff form and vacant face of our first trophy, but we managed to

remove all traces of our visit. When we had patted down the last shovelful of earth

we put the specimen in a canvas sack and set out for the old Chapman place beyond

Meadow Hill.

On an improvised dissecting-table in the old farmhouse, by the light of a powerful

acetylene lamp, the specimen was not very spectral looking. It had been a sturdy and

apparently unimaginative youth of wholesome plebeian type – large-framed,

grey-eyed, and brown-haired – a sound animal without Psychological subtleties, and

probably having vital processes of the simplest and healthiest sort. Now, with the

eyes closed, it looked more asleep than dead; though the expert test of my friend

soon left no doubt on that score. We had at last what West had always longed for –

a real dead man of the ideal kind, ready for the solution as prepared according to the

most careful calculations and theories for human use. The tension on our part

became very great. We knew that there was scarcely a chance for anything like

complete success, and could not avoid hideous fears at possible grotesque results

of partial animation. Especially were we apprehensive concerning the mind and

impulses of the creature, since in the space following death some of the more

delicate cerebral cells might well have suffered deterioration. I, myself, still held

some curious notions about the traditional "soul" of man, and felt an awe at the

secrets that might be told by one returning from the dead. I wondered what sights

this placid youth might have seen in inaccessible spheres, and what he could relate if

fully restored to life. But my wonder was not overwhelming, since for the most part I

shared the materialism of my friend. He was calmer than I as he forced a large

quantity of his fluid into a vein of the body's arm, immediately binding the incision

securely.

The waiting was gruesome, but West never faltered. Every now and then he applied

his stethoscope to the specimen, and bore the negative results philosophically. After

about three-quarters of an hour without the least sign of life he disappointedly

pronounced the solution inadequate, but determined to make the most of his

opportunity and try one change in the formula before disposing of his ghastly prize.

We had that afternoon dug a grave in the cellar, and would have to fill it by dawn –

for although we had fixed a lock on the house we wished to shun even the remotest

risk of a ghoulish discovery. Besides, the body would not be even approximately

fresh the next night. So taking the solitary acetylene lamp into the adjacent

laboratory, we left our silent guest on the slab in the dark, and bent every energy to

the mixing of a new solution; the weighing and measuring supervised by West with

an almost fanatical care.

The awful event was very sudden, and wholly unexpected. I was pouring something

from one test-tube to another, and West was busy over the alcohol blast-lamp which

had to answer for a Bunsen burner in this gasless edifice, when from the pitch-black

room we had left there burst the most appalling and demoniac succession of cries

that either of us had ever heard. Not more unutterable could have been the chaos of

hellish sound if the pit itself had opened to release the agony of the damned, for in

one inconceivable cacophony was centered all the supernal terror and unnatural

despair of animate nature. Human it could not have been – it is not in man to make

such sounds – and without a thought of our late employment or its possible

discovery both West and I leaped to the nearest window like stricken animals –

overturning tubes, lamp, and retorts, and vaulting madly into the starred abyss of the

rural night. I think we screamed ourselves as we stumbled frantically toward the

town, though as we reached the outskirts we put on a semblance of restraint – just

enough to seem like belated revelers staggering home from a debauch.

We did not separate, but managed to get to West's room, where we whispered with

the gas up until dawn. By then we had calmed ourselves a little with rational theories

and plans for investigation, so that we could sleep through the day-classes being

disregarded. But that evening two items in the paper, wholly unrelated, made it again

impossible for us to sleep. The old deserted Chapman house had inexplicably

burned to an amorphous heap of ashes; that we could understand because of the

upset lamp. Also, an attempt had been made to disturb a new grave in the potter's

field, as if by futile and spadeless clawing at the earth. That we could not

understand, for we had patted down the mould very carefully.

And for seventeen years after that West would took frequently over his shoulder,

and complain of fancied footsteps behind him. Now he has disappeared.

II.

THE PLAGUE-DAEMON

I shall never forget that hideous summer sixteen years ago, when like a noxious

affrite from the halls of Eblis typhoid stalked leeringly through Arkham. It is by that

satanic scourge that most recall the year, for truly terror brooded with bat-wings

over the piles of coffins in the tombs of Christchurch Cemetery; yet for me there is a

greater horror in that time – a horror known to in alone now that Herbert West has

disappeared.

West and I were doing post-graduate work in summer classes at the medical school

of Miskatonic University, and my friend had attained a wide notoriety because of his

experiments leading toward the revivification of the dead. After the scientific

slaughter of uncounted small animals the freakish work had ostensibly stopped by

order of our skeptical dean, Dr. Allan Halsey though West had continued to perform

certain secret tests in his dingy boarding-house room, and had on one terrible and

unforgettable occasion taken human body from its grave in the potter's field to a

deserted farmhouse beyond Meadow Hill.

I was with him on that odious occasion, and saw him inject into the still veins the

elixir which he thought would to some extent restore life chemical and physical

processes. It had ended horribly – in a delirium of fear which we gradually came to

attribute to our own over-wrought nerves and West had never afterward been able to

shake off a maddening sensation of being haunted and hunted. The body had not

been quite fresh enough; it is obvious that to restore normal mental attributes a body

must be fresh indeed; and the burning of the old house had prevented us from

burying the thing. It would have been better if we could have known it was

underground.

After that experience West had dropped his researches for some time; but as the zeal

of the born scientist slowly returned, he again became importune with the college

faculty, pleading for the use of the dissecting-room and fresh human specimens for

the work he regarded as so overwhelming important. His pleas, however, were

wholly in vain, for the decision of Dr. Halsey was inflexible, and the other professors

all endorsed the verdict of their leader. In the radical theory of reanimation they saw

nothing but the immature vagaries of a youthful enthusiast whose slight form, yellow

hair, spectacled blue eyes, and soft voice gave no hint of the supernormal, almost

diabolical owner of the cold brain within. I can see him now as he was then – and I

shiver. He grew sterner of face, but never elderly. And now Sefton Asylum has had

the mishap and West has vanished.

West clashed disagreeably with Dr. Halsey near the end of our last undergraduate

term in a wordy dispute that did less credit to him than to the kindly dean in point of

courtesy. He felt that he was needlessly and irrationally retarded in a supremely great

work; a work which he could of course conduct to suit himself in later years, but

which he wished to begin while still possessed of the exceptional facilities of the

university. That the tradition-bound elders should ignore his singular results on

animals, and persist in their denial of the possibility of reanimation, was inexpressibly

disgusting and almost incomprehensible to a youth of West's logical temperament.

Only greater maturity could help him understand the chronic mental limitations of the

"professor-doctor" type – the product of generations of pathetic Puritanism; kindly,

conscientious, and sometimes gentle and amiable, yet always narrow, intolerant,

custom-ridden, and lacking in perspective. Age has more charity for these

incomplete yet high-souled characters, whose worst real vice is timidity, and who are

ultimately punished by general ridicule for their intellectual sins – sins like

Ptolemaism, Calvinism, anti-Darwinism, anti-Nietzscheism, and every sort of

Sabbatarianism and sumptuary legislation. West, young despite his marvelous

scientific acquirements, had scant patience with good Dr. Halsey and his erudite

colleagues; and nursed an increasing resentment, coupled with a desire to prove his

theories to these obtuse worthies in some striking and dramatic fashion. Like most

youths, he indulged in elaborate daydreams of revenge, triumph, and final

magnanimous forgiveness.

And then had come the scourge, grinning and lethal, from the nightmare caverns of

Tartarus. West and I had graduated about the time of its beginning, but had remained

for additional work at the summer school, so that we were in Arkham when it broke

with full demoniac fury upon the town. Though not as yet licensed physicians, we

now had our degrees, and were pressed frantically into public service as the numbers

of the stricken grew. The situation was almost past management, and deaths ensued

too frequently for the local undertakers fully to handle. Burials without embalming

were made in rapid succession, and even the Christchurch Cemetery receiving tomb

was crammed with coffins of the unembalmed dead. This circumstance was not

without effect on West, who thought often of the irony of the situation – so many

fresh specimens, yet none for his persecuted researches! We were frightfully

overworked, and the terrific mental and nervous strain made my friend brood

morbidly.

But West's gentle enemies were no less harassed with prostrating duties. College had

all but closed, and every doctor of the medical faculty was helping to fight the

typhoid plague. Dr. Halsey in particular had distinguished himself in sacrificing

service, applying his extreme skill with whole-hearted energy to cases which many

others shunned because of danger or apparent hopelessness. Before a month was

over the fearless dean had become a popular hero, though he seemed unconscious

of his fame as he struggled to keep from collapsing with physical fatigue and

nervous exhaustion. West could not withhold admiration for the fortitude of his foe,

but because of this was even more determined to prove to him the truth of his

amazing doctrines. Taking advantage of the disorganization of both college work and

municipal health regulations, he managed to get a recently deceased body smuggled

into the university dissecting-room one night, and in my presence injected a new

modification of his solution. The thing actually opened its eyes, but only stared at the

ceiling with a look of soul-petrifying horror before collapsing into an inertness from

which nothing could rouse it. West said it was not fresh enough – the hot summer air

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ASci-FiTerrorTrilogyThreeTerrifyingShortNovelsThatBecameGreatScienceFictionHorrorFilmsAFuturesPastClassic-SelectedandIntroducedbyJeanMarieStine ARenaissanceEBookspublicationISBN1-58873-023-9AllrightsreservedThisEditionandSpecialContentsCopyright2001byJeanMarieStineThisbookmaynotbereproducedinwholeor...

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